Wilhelm Ziegler

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Wilhelm Ziegler (born November 25, 1891 in Birstein , † April 21, 1962 in Birnfeld ) was a German publicist , historian and civil servant at the time of National Socialism .

Live and act

In 1910 Ziegler began studying theology, history and economics in Marburg , Berlin , Göttingen , Bonn and Frankfurt am Main . He received his doctorate in 1915, was field division pastor of the 75th Reserve Division during World War I and lost a leg in 1916 as a result of an injury. In 1918 he got a job in the Reich Mobilmachungsamt. A year later he moved to the Reich Central Office for Homeland Service and in 1927 became a senior councilor. At around the same time he was one of the leading employees in the office of the Working Committee of German Associations . He had been a member of the German People's Party since 1925 . On May 1, 1933, he became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 2.011.036).

After the homeland service center was closed in 1933, Ziegler became a science officer in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . There he finally reached (1943) the rank of Ministerialrat and became deputy head of the literature department of the ministry as a Jewish advisor . In 1935, Ziegler was appointed as a representative of the Propaganda Ministry to head the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question , which he led until 1939 when his colleague Wolff Heinrichsdorff took over this task. In addition, Ziegler sat on the advisory board of the “Research Department Jewish Issues” at the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany and from 1941 took on a teaching position as honorary professor for modern history, politics and Jewish issues at the University of Berlin. From 1944 Ziegler sat in the leadership of the Nazi lecturers' association . Ziegler was with Paul Ritter Busch editor of the Carl Heymann Verlag since 1907 appearing and after 1933 conformist " Journal of Politics ", the oldest political science publication organ of Germany after he there already questions of political education in Germany (u booklet. 11 12, 1931) had written.

Ernst Klee reproduces a diary entry by Joseph Goebbels from March 5, 1940 on Ziegler's effect on a propaganda pamphlet about the British Empire : “Dr. Ziegler has written a great source work on 'English Humanity'. I let it be cannibalized. And all speakers should get it. "

After the end of the Second World War , numerous of Ziegler's writings were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet zone of occupation and in the German Democratic Republic . In 1949 Ziegler became head of the Federation of Aircraft Victims (Central Association of Aircraft Victims, Evacuees and Currency Victims) and was from 1950–54 for the BHE state parliament member in Hesse . From 1953 Ziegler was State Commissioner for the promotion of the zone border districts in the Hessian State Chancellery and thus a high official of the Georg August Zinn (SPD) for the State of Hesse .

From Democrat to National Socialist

In his book Introduction to Politics , published in 1927 and 1929, Ziegler shows that he was a supporter of the “ Weimar Republic ”, saw himself as a democrat and supporter of Friedrich Ebert and, to confirm his point of view, for example, the French literary scholar and politician of the left Edouard Herriot , who served in many functions, including minister, president of the national assembly, head of government, of the French Third Republic .

Ziegler's appeal to Herriot - and in the same breath to Jesus (p. 286) - contains the ambiguity of the policy he recommends, which he understands as national “on a democratic basis” (p. 292), but which aims at expansion . Because the problems listed by Ziegler, which he sees as the "next tasks of German politics" (p. 274) to be solved, are above all foreign policy, and always linked to the change in the losses caused by the " Versailles Treaty " that he listed in a detailed appendix (pp. 295–297). In his view, German politics has its own failings to complain about, which go back to the Middle Ages and in the 19th century led to “the logically inconceivable and tragic result” that “German history in the 19th century turned into a duel between two Colonial powers came to a head for the leadership of the German state ”, by which he means Prussia and Austria . In doing so, he describes himself as a supporter of a “ Greater German solution ”, as he simultaneously emphasizes the colonial aspect of Germany's historical development, always with a continental orientation towards the east (p. 12). This “large-scale thinking” ( Carl Schmitt ) also characterizes his perception of the First World War when he writes: “And if we even bring German politics during the World War to the actual higher denominator, then it was the image of the future around the Hamburg axis -Bagdad encircled Central Europe, which we saw as the ultimate goal of a victorious war ”(p. 20).

In a perception marked by imperialism , he speaks of the “white race”: “[…] politically, it has actually become 'the salt of the earth'. These Indo-Europeans ”- which Ziegler Germanic, Roman and Slavonic ranks -“ are without a doubt the most politically gifted and talented race in the world ”(p. 63). He emphasizes the “extraordinary importance of racial awareness for colonial policy”, but recognizes among the British that “men of Jewish race have occupied leading positions from the Prime Minister to the Viceroy of India [...] and that it is precisely the British, flying the flag of the Zionism , Palestine have helped to 'liberation' from the Turkish yoke "(p 68).

What Ziegler admires about the French Republic is how France, despite the defeat in the war against Germany between 1870 and the turn of the century, developed into the second largest colonial power after England (p. 288 f.). It was accepted that human rights would no longer apply outside the mother country, but that after the Code de l'indigénat, which was first passed for Algeria in 1881, the native Algerians were reduced to a lesser race . Édouard Herriot (1872–1957) was not only known to Ziegler as an advocate of French colonial expansion and colonialism in the form of a permanent state of emergency , but also on the German book market at the end of the 1920s with republican pacific titles such as United States of Europe , For the German- French understanding and represented with memories of a politician and statesman .

Ziegler holds back against other peoples with negative characteristics and a colonial division of people only appears when he sees the “white race” as the “salt of the earth”. Ziegler advocates expansion to the east and south-east into Slavic territory. The " Polish corridor " and its elimination as well as the use of the Vistula and the Danube are the most striking features that do not fit in with a peaceful solution and the good neighborly relations to the west and east (p. 277) that have been sworn, especially since they only would have to be resolved by calling into question the sovereignty and disregarding the borders to the newly created Slavic nation states. This means that Ziegler was aiming for an imperial republic like the French, but on the continent "a new Germany in a new Europe" (p. 292). The statements contained in the following passage appear most threatening when he protests against the fact that Germany is withheld “the elementary right of all nations, the right to national self-determination and to unite with our own kind. This is truly legal policy. It does not need any concealment, no double standard! Political prudence does not need to be silent for this reason either. The question of 'when' and 'how' is one of the basic rules of any politically mature propaganda. But there can be no more doubt about the 'that' ”(p. 292).

Ziegler is one of the first to justify the war: In 1939, his 79-page advertising brochure How did the war come about in 1939? which becomes compulsory reading, especially in the upper classes of high schools.

Fonts (selection)

  • Basics for patriotic teaching , Berlin: War Press Office, 1918
  • From dear mother , 4th, increased edition, Karlsruhe: JJ Reiff, 1922
  • Introduction to Economics , Berlin: Zentralverlag 1925
  • Mother Jolberg and the fathers of the Nonnenweier factory , Karlsruhe: Evang. Writings Association, 1925
  • Pictorial Evidence on the question of war-guilt , Berlin: Verlag Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft, 1925
  • Introduction to Politics , 2., verb. Edition, Berlin: Zentralverlag, 1929
  • Versailles, the story of an unsuccessful peace , Hamburg 1932; Second edition: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1933.
  • The German National Assembly 1919/1920 and its constitution , Zentralverlag, Berlin 1932
  • Contribution by WZ in Hans Weberstedt Ed .: Germany calls for equality. A collection of essays and broadcasts on the issues of equality, security and disarmament. Armanen , Leipzig 1933 (together with Johann von Leers and others anti-Semites)
  • Come to me , Karlsruhe: Evang. Writings Association, 1935
  • The fall of the Versailles Treaty , Berlin: Junker u. Dünnhaupt, 1937
  • The Jewish question in the modern world , Berlin: Junker u. Dünnhaupt, 1937.
  • People without leadership. The end of the Second Reich , Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, undated (1938)
  • What about France? A world-historical picture , Berlin-Dahlem: Ahnenerbe -Stiftung, 1939
  • How did the war come about in 1939 2nd edition, Reclam, Leipzig 1939
  • About English humanity. A document work , Berlin: Deutscher Verlag, 1940.
  • The modern world Jewry. In: Research on the Jewish question, Vol. 4, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt 1940, pp. 215–237.
  • Versailles. The story of a failed peace , Hamburg: Hanseatische Verl.-Anstalt, 1941.
  • Greater Germany's fight. A look back at the war year 1939/40 in politics and warfare. Reclam, Leipzig 1941
  • The final battle in Versailles , Feldpostausg., Hamburg: Hanseatische Verl.-Anstalt, 1942
  • Verdun. The hero song of the world war , 1st edition, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verl.-Anstalt, 1936
  • I want to serve , Evangelical Press Association for Baden , Karlsruhe 1948
  • Freiherr vom Stein , the pioneer of German freedom, unity and self-government , 3rd, exp. Ed., Bollwerk, Offenbach am Main 1952
as editor

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Archives Koblenz R 55/23023.
  2. ↑ Wilhelm Ziegler in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  3. ^ Max Wolkowitz: Working Committee of German Associations (AADV) 1921-1937 ; in: Dieter Fricke (Hrsg.): Lexicon for the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789-1945) , Volume 1, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1968, p. 48.
  4. ↑ Hans-Peter Klausch : Brown legacy. Nazi past Hessian state parliament member 1st – 11th Electoral term (1946–1987) . The Left Group in the Hessian State Parliament, Wiesbaden 2011 ( Download [PDF; 4.2 MB ]).
  5. ^ Journal of Politics - New Series ( Memento from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945? S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-10-039309-0 , pp. 694 .
  7. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-h.html
  8. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-y.html
  9. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1947-nslit-x.html
  10. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-x.html
  11. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-y.html
  12. ^ Wilhelm Ziegler: Introduction to Politics ; Berlin ²1929.
  13. ↑ Cf. on this Dirk van Laak : About everything in the world. German imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries , CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52824-4 ; Chapter “German Greater Economy”, pp. 126–129.
  14. ↑ In it the French saw the greatest social act of the 19th century: Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison , La République impériale. Politique et racisme d'État , Fayard: Paris 2009, p. 30.
  15. ↑ This makes Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison speak of "republican state racism".
  16. ^ O. Le Cour Grandmaison (2009), p. 264.
  17. ↑ Publisher's information: “10. Thousand "; again: Dt. House library, 1939. Contents, selected: The entry of the United States into the war / The overthrow of the tsarist rule / The long-range effects of the overthrow in Russia / The separation of spirits in Social Democracy / The “Independents” / Karl Liebknecht and the “Spartakusbund” / The first Strikes / The Russian Revolution / The same right to vote in Prussia / The Emperor's "Easter Message" / Erzberger's advance on July 6th / The Center wishes the Chancellor to resign / The nucleus of the Weimar coalition / The Crown Prince questions the party leaders / Bethmann's resignation / The The meaning of Erzberger's action / The motives of the opposition / The role of Matthias Erzberger / Bethmann Hollweg as "Führer" / Bülow and Tirpitz as candidates for Chancellor / Count Hertling rejects / Scheidemann creates a fait accompli / The "shyness mood" after Bethmann's fall / Plante Kaiser Karl one Separate peace? / The role of Count Czernin / The “Fatherland Party” / The victory of the Soviets in Russia / The peace offer of the S owjets / The peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk / Leon Trotsky in Brest Litovsk / The goal of the Russians / Trotsky declares the war over / Peace in the East? / Hertling's weakness / The new weapon - propaganda / The propaganda of the Soviets / The "Apostle" Wilson / Crewe-House / The decisive battle in the west / Clemenceau as Führer / What did Czernin want? / Kühlmann's Reichstag speech of July 24th / Hertling loses confidence in the Reichstag / Hertling adopted / Prince Max von Baden, the last Chancellor / The first draft speech of the Prince Max / The Reich government surrenders / The riot in Kiel / The "Revolutionary Committee" / The ultimatum of the Social Democrats / November 9th / November 11th / Why we lost the war.
personal data
SURNAME Ziegler, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian, Nazi official and politician (BHE), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Birstein
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 1962
Place of death Birnfeld